The Limits of Military Force and Other Countermeasures
Not even military action can hope to defeat terrorism completely or permanently; in fact, used too vigorously, it can backfire and escalate the reign of terror. Its role, therefore, must be very carefully calibrated and its use severely restricted and closely coordinated with more progressive instruments for managing terrorism. Even when the military option is taken to rescue hostages, success is difficult to achieve and luck (or the lack thereof) is a major factor in the eventual outcome, as elite Israeli special forces have learned from the bitter experience of failure. Additionally, as a means of retaliation, military force is motivated more by a desire to “do something” dramatic than by faith in its ability to prevent further attacks. Such incursions serve mostly to bolster an administration’s popularity and to satisfy momentarily a blinding thirst for revenge.
Although a military strike may send a message of national resolve and may temporarily impede some terrorist activity, it degrades terrorist capabilities minimally, for terrorists typically do not present easy, fixed, concentrated, or substantial military targets. Our military attacks are their rationalization for retaliation and can even serve their larger purpose – as in the case of Osama bin Laden’s desire to foment an Islamic revolution within the Muslim world by goading the U.S. into a military crusade against al Qaeda and Taliban forces. In the court of world opinion, a large and/or sustained exercise of military might by the U.S. against terrorist targets all too easily crosses the threshold from perceptions of self-defense to the unsavory spectacle of bullying behavior.[44] Little can be achieved and a great deal of harm is likely to result from relying on the armed forces for protection against this kind of threat.
Israel’s reaction to Palestinian terrorism is a dramatic case in point. Even with the benefit of overwhelming military superiority, the advantage of occupation, and the devastating impact of pointblank attacks on enemy strongholds, terrorism survives and even thrives. Nor can one explain away the inevitable failure of the April 2002 Israeli military escalation by saying it would have succeeded except for outside interference that momentarily blunted the West Bank invasion. Not only is there a long and failed history of Israeli attempts to eradicate Palestinian terrorism by military means, but also outside interference from Arab nations as well as Western powers is a reality of inherently conflicted international interests and pressures with which any state, including Israel, must contend and from which it cannot expect immunity. Accordingly, as U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell prepared on April 11 to travel to Israel on a peace-seeking mission, he “challenged the idea that strong Israeli military action on the West Bank could enhance security from terror.” Because of the depths of Palestinian anger and frustration, he said, “There will still be people who are willing to resort to violence and terror, people who are willing to use suicide bombs and other kinds of bombs,” no matter how much counterforce is applied. [45] For the U.S. there is the double embarrassment of countermanding a client state such as Israel even as Prime Minister Ariel Sharon justifies the escalation of military strikes against Palestinians by quoting from President Bush’s own call to arms against global terrorism, including the president’s call to destroy terrorism’s very infrastructure. Not only has the U.S. itself resorted to the perilous course of military assault on an illusive enemy but it has inadvertently reinforced the most counterproductive inclinations of frustrated and beleaguered Israelis and Palestinians.
Even Caleb Carr, who has more faith than I in military force as a limited instrument of counterterrorism, cautions against the temptation of the traditional American style of warfare which relies “on overwhelming force and the debilitating power of attrition to reach its military goals.” Such military tactics of total war, he argues, including long-range destruction and “particularly bombing campaigns” which necessarily result in substantial “collateral damage” no matter what our intentions or our claims to the contrary, must be abandoned in favor of more precise, selective, and limited methods that avoid civilian causalities and reduce the loss of America’s moral authority. Even then, such strictly limited and discriminating tactical operations are self-defeating instruments of counterterrorism to the extent that they function as “warfare against civilians, whether inspired by hatred, revenge, greed, or political and psychological insecurity.”[46]
Accordingly, skepticism should be our first response and our sustained reaction to the military option. But what other options exist? And what are their limitations? No one of them, we should forever remind ourselves, is a silver bullet, nor do all of them in concert amount to a final solution. Diplomacy, for instance, is a necessary medium for enlisting cooperation from other governments and coordinating counterterrorist policies and practices, such as gathering and sharing intelligence, negotiating treaties of extradition and sanctions against state sponsors of terrorism, reinforcing international norms against terrorism, and so on. Law enforcement is another key component of any comprehensive strategy for apprehending and prosecuting some terrorists, disrupting the free movement of others, and perhaps even deterring a relatively few. Yet, the arrest of one may prompt retaliation from others, even in those rare cases where leaders rather than low-level operatives are apprehended. Such rare cases are usually difficult to prosecute successfully because of appropriately high standards of evidence. Moreover, a decision to arrest a suspected terrorist must be balanced against the possibility of losing an unwitting source of counterterrorism intelligence. Disrupting terrorists’ finances is yet another partial tool for managing the threat. Freezing assets and blocking material support causes some damage that complicates terrorist operations, but the fact remains that terrorism is cheap, and the money trail is very hard to follow because much of it moves outside the formal banking system or via offshore banks that make a business of confidentiality. Finally, while intelligence gathering is crucial to monitoring terrorist activity, forewarning targets of attack, and even foiling some of the violence, agents cannot easily infiltrate decentralized terrorist cells or get close to tight-knit, highly motivated, and fiercely loyal members of inner circles. Besides the nearly impossible task of infiltrating terrorist organizations and collecting good information, analyzing the massive amounts of intelligence data accumulated from other sources, such as electronic surveillance, is equally challenging.[47]
Addressing Division Democratically
Given the inherent advantage of terrorists over any and all countermeasures at our disposal, from military assaults to diplomacy, law enforcement, disrupting finances, and gathering intelligence, how might a democratic people best address the root causes of the problem, short of any expectation of eliminating terrorism altogether but in the reasonable hope of reducing its intensity and lessening its incentives? The interconnected origins of terrorism and accompanying rituals of victimization include ideological, religious, ethnic, economic, and other profound sources of competing hierarchies, frustrated aspirations, divisive differences, and perceived injustices. Just as terrorism is itself a symbolic act, a dramatic performance of escalating violence against civilians that is intended as a deadly message for targeted audiences, the manner of addressing the motives of terrorism is also a symbolic act that can either exacerbate or ameliorate the human divide.
In the short run, we must do what we can to defend against imminent threats and attacks without anticipating complete success or resorting to counterproductive measures and methods incompatible with our aims and values. For the long haul, though, our greatest challenge is to engage a deeply conflicted world democratically. Coping democratically with underlying sources of recurrent terrorism means recognizing (a) that conflict and division are inherent to the human condition, (b) that a positive conception of peace (as contrasted with negatively defining peace as the absence of war – or, in this case, the eradication of terrorism) involves continuously bridging differences instead of attempting to eliminate or suppress them, and (c) that America’s material strength is matched by the potential of our political culture to acknowledge, deliberate, and constructively respond to the competing interests of domestic and foreign Others.
Using our considerable strength constructively and confidently to engage deep divisions democratically is no small challenge to be undertaken lightly or dismissed unrealistically. It is the means by which we can best determine, for example, where and how distributive injustices can and should be eased in order to reduce economic desperation as a motive for supporting and tolerating terrorism. And it is a process that potentially promotes hope instead of alienation by inviting wide and diverse participation – including the participation of those who are immediately impacted by the outcome of problem-solving deliberations over conflicted interests and issues. A world free of terrorism, like a world free of crime, disease or conflict and competition, is inconceivable; thus, our only realistic alternative is to translate our agonistic propensities and divisive circumstances into a productive political process – a political process guided by democratic values and employing democratic procedures.
There is a danger of being misunderstood when I say that we should promote democracy or more specifically when I call for engaging the world’s deep divisions democratically. This is not the same as Woodrow Wilson’s World War I call to make the world safe for democracy, nor is it an endorsement of the post-Cold War U.S. policy of democratizing nations throughout the world on the dubious premise that democracies, or at least stable democracies, do not fight one another. Both of these conventional interpretations amount to defending and/or imposing on others our own political system, i.e., advancing narrow national interests under the universal flag of democracy. They also imply that democracy is weak, vulnerable, and fragile, that it must be protected, even curtailed or suspended, when the nation is under attack, and that it should be deferred or delegated until divisive circumstances subside and a supportive, sophisticated political culture with a reliably informed, intelligent, and rational citizenry finally emerges globally. These are the traditional attitudes toward democracy that have diminished the democratic experience throughout American history, that make democracy something to protect more than to practice, something to fear rather than something safe and secure, something to contain and control rather than a guide to political action, something to rationalize a policy of empire rather than to motivate and define constructive participation in world affairs.[48]
Instead of reducing democracy to an endangered (and dangerous) object of protection and containment and thus to an all too readily available justification for war and domination, and rather than persisting in the futility of attempting to impose our will on a recalcitrant world, why not explore the untapped potential of democratic persuasion for addressing the exigencies of our time? I am not advocating a simple choice between persuasion and coercion, democratic practice and military force, isolationism and internationalism, idealism and realism, or any other false dichotomy or phony dilemma. Instead, I am suggesting a shift of emphasis. America’s potential for constructive leadership and responsible citizenship is not limited to its economic strength and military might. Moreover, any expectation of directing world affairs as a right and responsibility of superpower status is a recipe for more terrorist blowback. Exercising our power without translating our democratic values into actual practice forfeits our best chance to mitigate the underlying causes of terrorism in a world where the globalization of economies and communications creates an imperative to accommodate competing interests and perspectives. Pluralism on a global scale is the reality of this century with which America must learn to cope constructively, especially given our prominence on the world scene. Accordingly, the next frontier for Americans boldly to explore is the uncharted territory of democratic persuasion where we seek to increase our security in a profoundly conflicted world by articulating common ground on which to contest differences that otherwise intensify the motives for violence.
To chart this democratic frontier will require the same fortitude of purpose, strength of faith, courage, and ingenuity, the same desire for adventure, and the same aptitude for experimentation that has characterized Americans throughout a remarkable history of extraordinary achievement. Moreover, responding to the present exigency of global alienation and politically motivated violence against civilians by exploring the full potentiality of our democratic temperament conforms to a historical trajectory of increasingly democratizing U.S. political culture by extending the vote to previously disenfranchised groups and creating new opportunities for greater pubic participation. The remaining democratic deficit, as political philosopher Chantal Mouffe argues, prevents us from addressing adequately the global challenge of pervasive pluralism and thus from reducing the temptation to violence and victimization.[49] The question we should be asking is how to engage a deeply conflicted world democratically, not whether to wait until some mythical time when the human divide is somehow abolished by the righteous force of arms. Let us explore now, while it can still make a positive difference, the ways of transforming violence into rhetorical agonistics and thus mortal enemies into mere adversaries. This is the piece of the rhetorical puzzle still missing from a comprehensive strategy for easing the rule of terror. |
